NoFap Strategy
I'm putting down my dingaling.
Enter the NoFap
If jerking off caused weight gain, I’d be 500 pounds. I started jerking off when I was 5 years old. Since then, it has been the largest contributor of problems in my life. I was introduced to sex (molested) in foster care (the orphanage). I quickly learned to respond to my stressful childhood life by touching my wee-wee. By the time I was 7 or 8, it was a daily practice. Wake up, survive the beatings, the berating and the torment, drag myself into bed, have an orgasm, sleep.
It wasn’t long til I was trying to cum as often as possible. If I had a spare hour alone, I’d be touching myself. I wish I could go back to that child and help him. Recognize the downward spiral that he was on and lift him up out of it. My parents didn’t see it that way. They saw it as a disease that needed to be beaten out of me.
Thousands of beatings later, I still couldn’t not stop. I don’t want to go into the details of my abuse-a story no different from any other abuse story you’ve heard. However, I do want to delve into what was actually happening to me, scientifically. Articulating my thoughts on that is the true purpose of this blog post.
Addiction is … what? There are all these triggers that send up a dopamine spike. Cues that light up the receptors in your brain that a reward is imminent. It’s easy to understand it by picturing ancient humans in the wild. The sight of a fig tree would cause basically a miniature orgasm in the mind. Compelling the animal to search for food, thus increasing survival chance. That’s what the dopamine system does. It puts tags on memory events where something good happened to you. When the brain recognizes those tags again, it release the pleasure signal in advance. Encouraging you to seek the same reward you got the last time.
Porn one million years ago.
Breaking it down, you are essentially “addicted” to a lot of things. Mini addictions. Anything that you hope to happen at regular intervals. Making a yellow light. Seeing a donut shop. Amazon deliveries. Anything that makes you feel good. This mini-addictions can quickly become large and powerful mental diseases. This happens when your ability to resist pleasure becomes weaker than your desire to feel it. Chronic speeding at every light. Going through Star Bucks 3-4 times a day. Scrolling Amazon for 3 hours in a row. Benign habits become life destroying compulsions.
Unlike most animals, homo sapiens evolved the ability to resist pleasure. Take bears for example. Intellectually, not to far from your idiot neighbor. Fortunately your neighbor has some ability to resist his urge to rape, kill, and steal. Bears do not. Bears will rape, kill their young, eat them, and steal anything they get their paws on. They live always in the present moment. Survival RIGHT NOW is all that matters. We dominated the entire planet by recognizing the need to wait and cooperate.
Finding a fig tree, it benefited our ancestors to wait and not gorge themselves til vomiting. To preserve some fruit for the tribe. To help the mothers and the children. To keep the tree alive and hope for more fruit next season. That’s the superpower humans have. Just like tailbones and hiccupping we still have the remnants of the creatures we used to be.
The Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
I’m using my brain to look at pictures of a brain on wikipedia and trying to understand what’s happening in my brain. Bear with me here.
It comes down to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The part of your brain that interacts with neural circuitry and can intercept those signals. You know that feeling when you’re about to take an escalator but you stop and decide to take the stair instead? You can thank you dorsolateral prefrontal cortex fot that.
An important function of the DLPFC is the executive functions, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, planning, inhibition, and abstract reasoning. However, the DLPFC is not exclusively responsible for executive functions. All complex mental activity requires the additional cortical and subcortical circuits with which the DLPFC is connected.The DLPFC is also the highest cortical area that is involved in motor planning, organization and regulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorsolateral_prefrontal_cortex
In our hyper stimulating environment, your brain is constantly producing dopamine. It evolved to work in a harsh hard world. A world where watching grandma get drags off by lions in the night was a happy moment because you’d inherit the smooth rock she slept on. Today, there is constantly something pulling at your attention, attempting to seduce you to the pleasure it offers. TV, video games, potato chips, porn. The only thing between you and them is your DPC.
So why are we all fat lazy dumb etc?
If we have a part of the brain made for resisting the dopamine system, intercepting urges and choosing the paths we really want to take, why doesn’t work?
The more you do a thing, the easier it becomes for your brain to do it. Works for anything. Playing guitar. Cooking an omelet. Searching for porn on the internet. Your brain forms neural pathways for every action to do. Just like a river, the most you perform that action, the stronger and thicker that pathway becomes. These pathways eventually become so strong that they become unthinking habits.
You can experience this everytime you tie your shoe or back your car down the driveway. The first time you had to do these actions was extremely energy intensive and required 100% concentration and effort. Today, you can do them while scrolling Instagram. (If you can tie your shoes while scrolling Instagram, please dm me.) This is what happens with your bad habits as well. The more often you respond to an urge the more it strengthens your automatic response pathway to make satisfy that urge. Like opening your refrigerator every time to walk into the kitchen.
It’s not your fault
A big mistake that we all make here is blame ourselves. Self hate feels like the correct response when you hate how you look or your hate hate how you act and despite despising the actions you want to stop, you can’t. The stress becomes overwhelming. Your ability to resist urges reduces. Your bad habits becomes stronger. It happens over and over and over. A reverberating feedback loop of self destruction.
In the wild, it wasn’t possible for this feedback loop to trigger. There simply were no rewards available. No refrigerators filled with succulent treats. No gas stations filled with endless cans of ice cold beer. No fiber optic internet connections and cheap super computers with high fidelity displays able to construct images of infinite women having sex. In the wild, you’d find a fig, eat it, and that’d be your day.
Bring it back to yours truly, my 8 year old brain had literally zero ability to stop masturbating. Your prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully form until 25 years old. Doesn’t matter regardless because the PFC would only kick in if I was trying to fight the urge. The last thing I was doing why fighting it. My step mother would beat me for hours, I’d go to my room, and I’d spank my monkey. The habit was formed and unbreakable. Stress was my trigger and I was stressed every day.
Even today if I have a fight with my wife the first thing I want to do is go into my room and watch porn. Me, and millions and millions of people just like me got fucked by our environment. The speed at which everything, EVERYTHING, is changing has been catastrophic for the human condition. I can’t even hate my parents for what they did to me and my siblings. I know that what happened to them in their childhoods was unimaginably worse. In retrospect, it’s a miracle they didn’t do much much worse and I’m thankful that I was as lucky as I was.
Even thought it’s not our fault for having the issues that plague us daily, the systems responsibly for it are cold and unfeeling. Nothing, no one, will help you.
You can’t be addicted to jerking off
A quick google search will tell you that I’m a bro-scientist fanatic incel who has no idea what he’s talking about and that there is no such thing as masturbation addiction. Let’s be crystal clear here. Masturbation or even porn is not bad. Life is beautiful and you should do whatever makes you happy. I’m not nor will I ever advocate for people to quit slapping their happy stick. My situation is very different from most. I was molested and became addicted to sex when I was prepubescent. Porn and masturbation effect me differently. For me, daily masturbation has cost me thousands of hours I could of spent with my friends and family and on learning skills I’ve always inspired toward. Thousands of hours. What did I get back out those thousands of hours? Absolutely nothing but loneliness, heartache, anxiety, and melancholy. I don’t want to waste another second on it.
Masturbation is a compulsion that has stripped from me my ability to work, study, and socialize. In my mid twenties, at the peek of my career, I was finally making the money I had been dreaming of my entire life. Freedom granting money. But when it was time to sit down and produce value, my brain shut down. Every tiny interruption in my work was greeted by a soul sucking urge to alt-tab to porn. After busting a nut, I would feel completely dead inside. In front my my computer, splattered in my disgrace, feeling like I just climbed 3 mountains, I would have to force myself by to my labor. Or.. I could eat ice cream and play League of Legends. I’d always tell myself, “Just 1 game” or whatever excuse. I’d be telling myself that all day. A few hours of video games later, my pants would be back down around my ankles for another trip to wankersville.
During this time my anxiety was through the roof. Just talking to strangers could trigger a near panic attack. I walked down the streets of New York with my eyes glued to the floor. Making eye contact with another human for more than a single second was literally impossible. As if my eyes were attached to magnets repelling our gazes. I was obsessed with sex and if you had a conversation with me more than twice, you’d know about it. I viewed all women as pure sex objects. Any glance at a women would cause a full on hardcore porno compilation running in my head. That’s literally all I could see in my mind. Sitting in front of the computer for 10+ hours a day lead to my back stooping like an old crone. By the time I was in highschool my neck was only a few degrees off from horizontal. The kids called me a dinosaur. I lost friend after friend the more and more I watched porn. I was always trying to fuck their girlfriends while of course I never had one of my own. If a girl was ever attracted to me for whatever reason, that attraction would evaporate as quickly as rain in the Sahara.
Starting NoFap
I remember the first day I went 24 hours without masturbating. It was a complete accident. It’s very easy to find a time/place to jerk off. One night at a company retreat for work, I got drunk and blacked out before I could do my normal routine in the bathroom. The next day I woke late and couldn’t get it done in the morning either. I found myself at a pool party with at least half the guest being people I didn’t know. Jesus Christ people I don’t know! My only weakness! But I just felt.. fine. I could talk without being in my head, over analyzing every word. I stood up straighter. I joked and had fun. A girl even smiled at me. I ran home and jerked off as soon as I could of course, but that memory stayed with me. It was years after, but that first day was the inspiration to try it.
I started experimenting with NoFap in 2015 when I was 26. I made very little progress. I started going one day, maybe two without orgasm but I would be masturbating the entire time. Abstaining wasn’t just denying yourself pleasure. It was making me exponentially hornier than I had ever been in my life. For the first year, I could hardly go a day without. I can’t even being to articulate how hard it was to just.. not cum. I was so used to jerking off twice a day for a long as I could remember. Anytime I was alone, it would just be me fighting like a bear in a trap with myself to not open my laptop.
In late 2016 I reach 3 days for the first time. I was literally high on the sensation. For the first time in my life, I could walk down the street and I felt no fear. Like.. none. My brain was flooded with this sparkly sensation. I’d never felt so good in my life. Sadly, these powerful positive feels were met 1:1 with sexual desire. The longer I abstained the more I wanted to cum. Even when it was giving me all these psychological benefits and “relapsing” would delete them. But I was hooked. It was a constant constant struggle but I started consistently reaching 3 days without an orgasm.
Habit Breaking
I started hitting longer and longer streaks. Everything started changing for me. I could sit down and study something difficult on my own for the fist time. I could maintain a relationship and keep my partner relatively happy. I could start exercising on a regular basis. I could feel self confidence. I also started reading again, for the first time since I was very young and I started reading more about how to help myself. In February of 2020 I started tracking my bad habits.
📛 = Relapse 🤖 = Porn Use
Progress was very slow. I don’t see how anyone could say that it wasn’t an addiction. I was trying everything to quit and it was like pulling out my own teeth every step of the way. I could not see progress in terms of days. In terms of years however, my new habits were starting to coalesce into something good.
Two years later I could regularly go a week without having an orgasm. The consequences of that: More reading, more exercise, zero social anxiety, a lot more studying. I became fluent in Japanese and built an iPhone app. Not too bad. But I was still watching porn almost every single day.
Which brings us to January 25th. Almost 10 years of experiments with NoFap. 1 relapse per month. I have come a long way. The time and energy I get from not touching my dingaling has lead way to me creating new life goals, maintaining a happy marriage, teaching my kids several advanced skills and putting most of my time into self-development and learning rather than watching Netflix and YouTube. But it’s not enough.
Ultimate Failure
Last month, December 2024, I spent 12 hours and 53 minutes jerking off. Actually is more than that because I only track the time after the fact and its a soft estimate. I never turn on the tracker right when I alt-tab. In reality, even after all these years, I pull up porn every day. 10 years of trying to quit and I still haven’t made any progress…
My strategy failed. Maintaining the calendars. Utilizing a time tracker. Even my little journal I used to write about it. None of that has worked. When one strategy fails, you have to learn, iterate, and re-strategize.
No Fap Strategy
I’ll reiterate incase anyone actually reads this. I don’t give a fuck what you do with your genitals. I’m not selling you here. Have a blast. There are very few people in the world you should take advice from and I’m not one of them. This documentation is my strategy.
I will cut off the last head off the hydra. Over 10 years I learned how to never have an orgasm but I still watched porn and touched my peepee anyway. I took the soft easy route and now I’m paying for it. Now I have to publicly embarrass myself. I’m a nobody with no reputation so it’s not so bad but I still don’t want to expose how I can’t control my desire to look up titties online. But I will do anything to be able to quit, if only just for the challenge in it of itself.
Stratagem 1
Blogging
This blog piece so far has taken my over 6 hours to write. It will not be read by anyone and will over serve to injure my reputation not bolster it. So what is the point of writing about my no-sticky-dicky adventure? Writing is the ultimate learning tool. This piece took 6 hours to write because most of the time I was sat thinking and reflecting on my thoughts, discovering gaps in knowledge, researching my theories, and pondering how to articulate it all. Next time I alt-tab I will be like, “Hey, don’t forget you have to strengthen your dorsolateral prefrontal cortext”.
Stratagem 2
White Board
I bought the biggest white board on Amazon.
Playing thousands of hours of video games taught me at least one thing. Clear visible directives are fun. Seeing my progress in real space in real time is a constant reminder of the mission im on. Getting to cross off an X and see the calendar fill up feels just as good as slaying dragons and collecting loot. Streaks are a psychological trick used in everything from Duolingo to Chinese gatcha mobile trash. It works by implanting (often subconsciously) a problem in your mind. Once you have created this game in your head to not “lose” the streak, seeing the chain brain becomes actually distressing. If black companies can use it to get us addicted to gambling and shopping, why can’t we use it for good instead?
Stratagem 3
Delay and Distraction
The PFC (Prefrontal Cortex) can employ delay and distraction tactics when encountering a difficult decision. It’s that voice in your head that says, “How about only 2 cookies”, when you grab a bunch out of the pack. Like with any muscle you can train your brain to squeeze the breaks when you get a huge dopamine rush to do a bad habit. Start by delaying gratification. Instead of quitting porn 100% cold turkey, stop yourself and wait 5 minutes. By doing so, the cords of neurons in charge of self discipline literally get thicker and stronger.
Maybe at first you can only delay for 10 seconds. Keep increasing in interval for longer and longer spans of time until you can simple stop the urge all together. After mastering that, you can then replace that urge with a good habit you want to do instead. Feel a urge to eat a bag of popcorn? Delay it, and the distract yourself by doing 20 pushups instead. You can swap any bad habit for a good habit. Potato chips to pushups. Video games to guitar. Marijuana to Spanish. Porn to writing. The more you do it, the stronger the new neural pathways become and the old bad ones wither and die.
In conclusion
Blah blah something about jerking off. It’s sad that I have to learn these skills that were just a given only a few generations ago. People didn’t have these problems not that long ago. Nothing is more emasculating than knowing that my biggest issue in my life is that I spend more time watching porn than doing work. It’s embarrassing and horrible. So I will be writing about the next 30 days of No Fap. No masturbation. No Porn. It will be a bumpy road. Right before I started finishing up this piece I watched almost an hour of porn, using my all willpower to not touch my dick. It’s so difficult to quit that half the time, I think that maybe the pro-porn advocates are right and i’m the crazy one for trying to quit. That i’m mentally ill or becoming so. I don’t know the answer. But the thought of being able to produce my dreams into reality by working and studying and not wasting time looking a titties is so liberating that I will follow this path to the end no matter where it leads.
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” ― Thomas A. Edison
Thanks, see ya soon.
Interesting links
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763411000807 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0074774216301131